U.S. President Donald Trump extended a tariff truce with China by another 90 days on Monday, a White House official said, staving off triple-digit duties on Chinese goods as U.S. retailers prepared for the critical end-of-year holiday season.

Just hours before an Aug. 1 deadline expired, the US president imposed sweeping new tariffs on imports from global trading partners, escalating an aggressive trade policy aimed at reducing the US trade deficit.

Tariff orders released by the White House call for increases in the tariff rate on Canada from 25 percent to 35 percent, although they exempt all goods trading under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which economists say includes most Canadian exports to the United States these days.